Complicated train crash in the Netherlands

[MStLfan]

Last night, a complicated train crash happened between Barendrecht and Rotterdam. Luckily (but sadly) only one life was lost, one of the freight train engineers died. A few passengers from adjacent passenger trains were lightly injured.

Around 22.30 two freight trains (DBS and ERS Railways) collided head on under a busy highway viaduct (A15), a passenger train on the next track made an emergy stop and was hit by shrapnel as was a second passenger train.

It will be some time before the debris is removed and track and catenary rebuild.

Even though this is relatively close to my home, I hardly noticed a thing.

Accident happened here: lorentzweg barendrecht

Slideshow:  http://www.rijnmond.nl/Homepage/Nieuws?view=%2FNews%2FDefault%2F2009%2Fseptember%2FTreinen%20gebotst%20bij%20Barendrecht

http://www.nu.nl/slideshow/1879340/popup.html#

Pictures: http://www.nufoto.nl/fotos/115923/treinbotsing-barendrecht.html

My condolences to the family of the engineer.

Edit: this daytime passenger train cabride video shows the location of the crash at 2:53. Freight train to the left is on the dedicated freight tracks were accident happened and passenger trains were in between in this view.

This video is of the crash site: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE3Fh-vgwe0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SqN2KdPTJM

 

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

Wow - 'Murphy's Law' at work, for sure.

From the lead photo and one photo of the damaged cars on the bridge roadway, it sure looks like the bridge collapsed as well - perhaps the supporting piers were taken out by the careening freight train wreckage ?  If so, that justifies the heavy walls typically used under North American bridges that cross railroad tracks.

I wonder if this incident will lead the European railways to adopt a version of Positive Train Control, to preclude the clearly possible much worse catastrophe that was narrowly (and thankfully) avoided this time ?

Thanks for posting.

- Paul North.

[BaltACD]

Doesn't appear that the bridge collapsed.  The wreckage just piled upon itself to the bottom of the bridge.  Bridge piers appear to be in place and standing at a normal height.

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

Perhaps that is the case.  I may have been faked out by the camera's angle and  perspective view, and mistakenly associated an adjoining photo of a street crash as being on the top deck of the bridge.

But the catenary's wires seem to be kinked downwards and under strain in a couple of places, and there doesn't seem to be much clearance above both the loco and the battered Maersk container, particularly when you look at the height of the flatcar in the foreground, which appears to have its trucks shorn off.

Let's see if Marc can clarify/ confirm this for us, one way or the other.

- Paul North.

[MStLfan]

Hi Paul,

From this daylight picture you can see that we have been lucky. This could easily have resulted in the worst rail disaster in the Netherlands.

http://www.nufoto.nl/fotos/115956/zware-schade-door-treinbotsing-barendrecht.html

The gray and yellow DBS diesel is the rear one of two The DBS engineer died and the ERS engineer was taken to hospital in critical condition. The gray diagonal beam is the last catenary portal before the viaduct. It has been knocked loose from its left support and came to rest on the loco and the first tankcar. Tankcars are pretty solidly built but if the engineer of the international service to Bruxelles had crashed into it ... Luckily he managed to stop his train in time so his passengers only sustained minor injuries.

The tank cars carried natural gas condensate and I don't know at what point it explodes or catches fire but you can imagine the combination of downed but still live catenary, volatile liquid and a tank car in the way of a passenger train at trackspeed (140 kph there). Luckily, the tankcar didn't get in the way of 150 passengers, that train therefore did not crash into the bridge and the local at the next track over and the highway viaduct got only minor damage and was back in use with the morning rushhour.

If you remember the scene from the German high speed train ICE crash at Eschede, you can easily imagine what could have happened here, even if the speed would have been slower.

Normally the underside of the catenary is 6 meters above the top of the rail. At viaducts it usually is lower and often hangs from it. Crashes like this make a mess of both track and catenary. It is expected that it will take around 5 days to get back to normal with freight trains backing up al the way to Switzerland.

Which means the line (which also runs in front of my house) will be busy with detours that have to go the long way around. Hope this clears some things.

Edit: small grammatical error corrected.

[MStLfan]

Here is a link to a trackmap of the site:

http://www.sporenplan.nl/

Klick on the red "sporenplannen" top left, then choose NL on the map. Choose second option: "actuele tekeningen - uitgebreid". Scroll down and on the left you should see Rotterdam. Below it, click on the small blue link.

Top left shows the high speed line HSL in red. Below it are three freight tracks, BE, CE and DE. The highway viaduct is roughly near signals 322 and 324 / tracks BE and CE after they have exited the Barendrecht tunnel (which isn't a real tunnel but a big concrete box over 9 tracks) to the right.

That will make it a little easier to understand what you can see at this map http://maps.google.nl/maps?hl=nl&tab=wl .

DBS (Deutsche Bahn Schenker, formerly know as Railion in the Netherlands) train with tankcars came from the right or north, ERS Railways containertrain came from the left or south.

 

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

Marc - OK, thanks much for the clarifications, corrections, and comments, as well as the map links - that all makes it easier to comprehend. 

Yes, unfortunately the one engineer was killed - but you are quite right, providentially a much worse disaster was avoided.  With railroad lines as busy and crowded as that, anything going wrong has the potential for involving several other trains and many additional people very quickly. 

Hope it gets restored to normal and you get to see some unusual traffic on that detour route.  Would you be able to go there and watch the clean-up and repair work from a safe location ?

- Paul North.

[MStLfan]

Paul_D_North_Jr

Marc - OK, thanks much for the clarifications.

 

You're welcome Paul.

Paul_D_North_Jr

Hope it gets restored to normal and you get to see some unusual traffic on that detour route.  Would you be able to go there and watch the clean-up and repair work from a safe location ?

- Paul North.

In theory the site is pretty accessible by road and particularly bike and it is less than 4 km away as the crow flies. In practice the access roads will be blocked by the equipment used and / or 6 meter high sound barriers.

The route is very important to the Port of Rotterdam and Royal Army engineers have already looked at the site to see what they can do to help. Should be an interesting field exercise for them. Biggest problem is getting the locomotives out from under the viaduct as a class 66 weighs 127 metric tons and a class 6400 80. Probably means scrapping on the spot.

There will be widespread detours and scheduled heavy maintenance has been postponed on the detour routes.

[BaltACD]

marcimmeker

The route is very important to the Port of Rotterdam and Royal Army engineers have already looked at the site to see what they can do to help. Should be an interesting field exercise for them. Biggest problem is getting the locomotives out from under the viaduct as a class 66 weighs 127 metric tons and a class 6400 80. Probably means scrapping on the spot.

There will be widespread detours and scheduled heavy maintenance has been postponed on the detour routes.

A little duct tape and WD40 and they will be a good as new.

[sgtbean1]

Just in: the engines from the freight trains will be "towed" apart by the Royal Army Corpse of Engineers by means of Leopard tanks. Because of the location it's impossible to get to the wreckage to take it apart, so the tanks will be used to drag the bulk of the wreckage out from under the overpass.

As stated before, this could have ended a lot worse than it did.

I hope this wreck doesn't lead to another "ban the dangerous freight trains!"-movement. For some reason people in this country rather have droves of trucks on the already crowded roads causing even more dangerous situations. As soon as something happens to a train, they immidiately start talking about banning / detouring freight on that particular section of track.

Anyway, my condolances to the loved ones of the engineer that died, and hang in there to the loved ones of the engineer in hospital.

[BaltACD]

sgtbean1

Just in: the engines from the freight trains will be "towed" apart by the Royal Army Corpse of Engineers by means of Leopard tanks. Because of the location it's impossible to get to the wreckage to take it apart, so the tanks will be used to drag the bulk of the wreckage out from under the overpass.

I take it that there is no railroad wrecking contractor such as Hulcher on the other side if the pond.  Hulcher has been the name for Eastern Railroads when it comes to wreck clearance.  They have a fleet of Caterpillar D9 bulldozers that have heavy duty A frames mounted on their sides with the lifting capability of a crane.  The generally show up with 2 to 4 D9's and can lift and move virtually anything to wherever it needs to go to assist in wreck clearance.  Wrecks that took 2-3 days to clear with railroad Wreck Trains would be cleared in 12-18 hours by Hulcher.  Hulcher is just one of a number of wreck clearance contractors that the railroads use.

 

http://www.hulcher.com/services_railroad.html

[MStLfan]

It's been some time since we had such a serious wreck and could not get at it with cranes.

Normally the regular railroad maintenance contractors are called upon and they rent one or more cranes from the usual crane rental companies. Or can simply drag the trains apart.

The tanks should be trying again around now (14.00 h) and are of the type normally used to rescue stranded / wrecked tanks.

[sgtbean1]

Well, AFAIK Prorail, whose main task is to provide dispatching services and track maintenance for the entire Dutch rail infrastructure, have recently taken over a division of NedTrain that deals with accidents and wrecks like these. I believe the equipment they have at their disposal was not capable of pulling the wreckage clear of the overpass, so that's why the RACE provided the tanks instead.

I've tried to find a picture of the operation but so far shot a blank.

[TH&B]

I'm surprised heavy duty bulldozers are not more effective then tanks !?

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

Since the loco can't be lifted, it has to be dragged.  But the needed force to move it is roughly half its weight, or around 127,000 lbs. / 63.5 tons/ 60,000 kg.  Both tanks and bulldozers would need multiple units to develop that amount of tractive effort - and sitting on rails, ties, and loose ballast, may not be able to get a good enough 'grip' to do that, without some other aid.

But what the engineers will use is either a 'tank retriever' - the only thing bigger and badder than the tank, even though they are usually built on a tank chassis - or an engineer's vehicle, which is similar.  Here, that kind of equipment may have 2 things that most dozers don't, which would make them better suited for this task - a winch that they can run to a catenary pole foundation or some other fixed object, and with multiple sheaves develop the necessary pulling force; and a plow or spade-type outriggers [can't think of the correct word for them this early] that they can jam into the ballast or down between ties to effectively link themselves to the track structure.  Perhaps some of the members here with military experience and esp. with tanks and tank retrievers or engineer's dozers can add some more.

- Paul North.

[sgtbean1]

Paul,

you're right they used a Leopard recovery tank, not a normal one. In short, what they did was secure the tank to two locomotives to give it an ancorage, then used the winch to pull the wreckage apart. They couldn't use the bulldozer blade to effectively "brace" the tank as they normally would, because of the amount of underground wires that could be damaged in the process. That's why they used the two locomotives as counter weights.

Some pictures can be found here:

http://www.defensie.nl/actueel/nieuws/2009/09/26/46136127/Leopard_bergingstanks_ruimen_verongelukte_locomotieven

And even more (although watermarked) here (use the "volgende" link on the bottom to see more):

http://www.anp-photo.com/search.pp?flush=1&keyword=barendrecht

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

Thanks for the confirmation, additional information, and photo links - too bad that one photographer apparently has a bad case of vertigo. 

Most likely it is one of the Leopard 2 'Buffel' variants that was used - i'm no expert, but a little Internet research led me to this, for those who are interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bergepanzer_Bueffel.jpg 

See also this Wikipedia article: 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_2#Engineering_and_driver_training_tanks 

Engineering and driver training tanks

BPz3 "Büffel", German Army.

Bergepanzer BPz3 Büffel (Gr. Buffalo) The BPz3 armoured recovery vehicle (ARV) includes both a bulldozer and a crane with integral winch, allowing it to approach damaged vehicles, even over rough and fought-over terrain, and tow them to safety. It is equipped with a machine gun for local self-defence, a smoke grenade launcher, and NBC protection. Like the tank, it is powered by a 1,500 PS (1,479 hp, 1,103 kW) diesel engine. In service with Germany (where it is also designated Büffel or Bergepanzer 3 for Salvage Tank 3), The Netherlands (who co-developed it and call it Buffel), Austria, Greece, Spain (where it is called Leopard 2ER Bufalo), Sweden (in modified form as the Bgbv 120), Canada, and Switzerland.

Also, here's a link to an article (in German ?) with more details and specifications: 

 http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergepanzer_B%C3%BCffel 

- Paul North.

[beaulieu]

Marc, are the lines through the area still equipped with the ATB-EG system or the newer ATB-NG safety system? No system likes the multiplicity of routes possible at the northern throat of Kifhoek Yard. Eventually the freight tracks in the area are to receive ETCS, but I haven't heard that this had been done yet.

 

Edit - I found the answer myself, the line is equipped with both ATB-EG (1st generation safety system) and ATB-NG (improved system), no ETCS yet. The Railion locomotives were only equipped with the early ATB-EG system. This system has a flaw in that if the locomotives are moving at 40 kph or less the Automatic Train Stop function will not stop the train from passing a red signal. The newer ATB-NG system works down to 10 kph.

[MStLfan]

The major problem, as I understand it, is that Kijfhoek - Barendrecht - IJsselmonde / Rotterdam harbor line is used by both the dedicated freight trains on the harbor line - Betuweroute - Germany and freight trains that use the domestic rail lines. The new Betuweroute and the upgraded harbor line have ETCS (the one on the harbor line as well as the very last part of the 25 kV electrification are about to be activated I believe) and the rest ATB-EG.

As usual (at least over here) it is a both a technical problem and a monetary one. If I understood things correctly this weekend, the technical side has not been figured out completely and the usual wrangling about who pays for what and when also has not come to a satisfactory conclusion for all parties involved. The same problem exists at Zevenaar at the other end of the Betuweroute. We had an incident there just a week earlier.

ATB-EG is the first generation train control, again as I understand it, and it has a design feature that allows limited operation when there is a system failure. The max speed then is 40 kph. This was done to keep things fluid. Which is why almost all major accidents of the last ten years or so have involved trains moving at speeds below 40 kph.

The design feature could now be regarded as a mistake or flaw I guess but it does come in as very handy on a railsystem with 5000+ passenger trains, 200+ freight trains and about 1.2 million passengers a day. Leave those passengers stranded for very long and things might go out of hand.

For a long time it was stated that ATB-EG and ATB-NG (new generation) could not work together but some time ago it was proven that it could (on the Gouda - Alphen aan den Rijn line were regular haevy trains use ATB-EG and light rail ATB-NG). So ATB-NG has been installed only in dedicated places like large branchline networks in the north and east. According to Wikipedia the last ATB-EG has been installed as recently as 2001-2002.

See this map: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATB_Nieuwe_Generatie

red = no ATB (2 short freight only branches, 1 inactive passenger line, 4 museum operations and 3 active and 2 inactive border crossings with Germany in the southeast and 3 bordercrossings with Belgium in the south)

blue = ATB-EG

dark green = ATB-NG

light green = ECTS/ERTMS

The relevant Wikipedia articles in Dutch (for those who want to translate things for themselves):

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATB_Nieuwe_Generatie

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATB_Eerste_Generatie

There are also two variants:

ATBM+ which is in use on the line Den Haag Mariahoeve - Leiden - Hoofddorp (-Schiphol and Amsterdam) to allow the Thalys tgv sets to run at 160 kph were everything else is restricted to 140 kph. It overlays some ATB-NG features on ATB-EG.

ATB-E (E = eenvoudig or simplified) is a system were part of it (the brains so to speak) is in a movable box. It is used for some rail construction equipment as well as steam engines from museum operators. By law since 2009 everything that uses the tracks must have ATB.

Hope this clarifies things.

In this small, densely populated country things often take a long time to get done, particularly if it relates to spatial planning. Everyone wants to have a say in matters / wants to be heard / express an opinion. Often incidents like what happened at Barendrecht are needed to speed things up. If you ever had the pleasure of working with my countrymen and -women you know what I talk about.